Of posters and billboards honoring the revolutionary insights of
a martyred guerrilla hero who before his death fell out of favor
with the nation's leader for life who now allows his
idolization.

Of a socialist government who offers its citizens tantalizing
morsels of private enterprise, only to withdraw the treat just as
quickly and without explanation.

Of a repressive, totalitarian regime that prohibits its citizens
from staying in hotels catering to foreigners but with a wink
allows its artists to express themselves by painting their beloved
island as a cage or as an alligator with the head of a shark and
the tail of a snake.

It is Cuba and it is fascinating.

While there may be reasons for Castro to make Che Guevara the
symbol of all things revolutionary, almost to the exclusion of
himself, because it is hard to blame a long-dead man for the
current regime's problems. Other explanations for Cuba's other
paradoxes are not as easy.

Or, as Vassar College History Professor Leslie Offutt told our
study group on a recent tour of the island, "There are various
Cuban realities."

The country, a Mecca for American tourists and the Mafia in the
1940s and 1950s, had become the Island of Sin and remnants of those
times, glamorously immortalized in newsreel clips of Hemingway, Ava
Gardner and the gangster Bugsy Siegel luxuriating in lush Cuban
landscapes, remain today in the vestiges of wonderful old palaces
and homes preserved in their Spanish heritage.

The island itself seems caught in a 1950s freeze
frame.

With its mix of 1950 Chevys and 1980 Soviet-made Ladas, its
African-Cubans, its Chinese-Cubans and its profoundly mixed
population base, marred by a long history of slavery tied
intimately with its sugar cane culture, it is truly a curious yet
exotic blend of people and beliefs, all wrapped up in a
strait-jacket called El Jefe, "the chief," Fidel Castro.

It is a nation unaccustomed to self-governance. Except for a
brief period in the 1930s and since the fall of the Soviet regime
in the early 1990s, it has neverbeen solely responsible for
itself.

It was one of the longest held colonies in the western
hemisphere; its establishment as a republic in 1902 came almost a
century after its Latin American counterparts had won their freedom
and yet when finally attained Cuban independence was so constrained
by American control that one scholar refers to the period as one of
"mediated sovereignty."

Only in the late 1920s did Cuba get a taste of the concept of
itself as a nation, as it sought to diversify its manufacturing
base away from sugar, to improve its infrastructure and to begin to
modernize.

But a growing labor movement threatened those in power who
increasingly turned to corruption and repression to keep control
until Castro, a university-trained lawyer, and Che Guevara, a
physician and product of the Argentinean bourgeoisie, toppled the
Batista dictatorship on Dec. 31, 1958 and marched triumphantly into
Havana on New Year's Day 1959.

For the next 30 years, Cuba relied on its ties to the Soviet
state to feed its people and to power its homes.

So it seems Cuba is a nation forever caught in the state of
becoming and just what it will become next is an enigma to
many.

'What's Next?'

Vicki Huddleston, a career diplomat who heads the U.S. Special
Interests Section in Havana and describes Cuba and Castro as being
in the "wintertime of the revolution," is not necessarily
optimistic.

The Elian Gonzalez protests in Havana, she said, showed Castro
"trying to solidify his position. We don't see any change
immediately in fact."

Cubans themselves believe change will only come with the
"biological solution," with the passing of the 76-year-old Castro,
she said.

What follows him is anybody's guess and there is a host of
not-so-appealing choices like Castro's younger but not-as-smart
brother Raul and other cronies in the Politburo under which the
system would stay the same, Huddleston wrote in a policy paper last
spring after the Elian Gonzales debacle.

"What does this mean for change in Cuba?" Huddleston wrote. "It
is possible that Cuba could become unstable. The advantage right
now is that at least Cuba is stable. There could be violence, a
struggle for power, the settling of scores, Cuba could harbor
terrorism or it could harbor crime. We have much at stake, as do
the Cuban people, and it greatly concerns us that at this moment
there isn't a viable transition in Cuba."

Meanwhile, she told our group of Vassar alumna and friends
recently, Castro shows no inclination to talk to us.

"We have tried to talk to them on matters of international
policy, such as arms control, the economy but they say they will
not talk to us until we drop the embargo," she said, referring to
the U.S. trade embargo in effect since 1962.

There is a "very large question," Huddleston said, whether
Castro himself wants the U.S. trade embargo lifted.

There is speculation that Castro fears lifting of the embargo
would subsequently unleash a flood of foreign investments, bringing
foreign influence and specifically U.S. involvement, which would
undermine his regime.

What's more, Castro would no longer have the United States as an
excuse for all that is not right in his country.

There is also no great impetus for the United States to lift the
embargo, she said. "We've had an embargo on for 40 years. There is
no overwhelming reason for it to disappear."

In addition to our history of animosity with the Castro regime,
exploding with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and our uneasy
geography, Cuba, she said, unlike China, has made no effort to
change its human rights record.

"China has made some improvements" in human rights, she said,
and in privatizing its economy. "They (the Chinese) talk to us," as
opposed to Cuba, she said. "Cuba has been very clear they are not
interested in doing anything to lift the embargo."

It also seems apparent that if Cuba, a nation of about 11
million, had the economic appeal of a China American businesses
long ago would have been pushing to lift the U.S- legislated trade
bans. But Cuba is an island about the size of Pennsylvania in the
Caribbean, not the most populous nation on earth.

Cubans, by the way, call our trade sanctions a blockade, not
embargo, citing the United States's Helms-Burton Act and other
legislation including penalties sponsored by New Jersey's own Sen.
Robert Torricelli that penalize businesses and travelers from third
countries for trading with or visiting Cuba.

In the past, the United States has attempted to thaw relations
only to watch as Cuba tried to export its revolution, first in
Ethiopia during the Carter administration and then in Angola under
the Reagan administration.

The Clinton administration was also exploring a thawing of
relations when the Elian Gonzalez crisis erupted. Ironically but
not surprisingly, Huddleston said, relations only worsened after
the boy was returned to his father in Cuba.

Castro, the quintessential propagandist, had seized the issue to
rally his people, particularly the country's youth, around the
spirit of revolution and to use the moment to once more decry
American intervention.

Guantanamo Lease Expires Next Year

The next crisis looms with the 2002 expiration of the 99-year
lease of the Guantanamo Naval Base for which we pay $4,000 a
year.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of people in the United States,
including those who fled the Castro regime, who fear that a lifting
of the embargo would only serve to empower and strengthen Castro's
regime and his determination to spread his form of revolution. It
is hard to say what the point of all this is on a human level.
Clearly, the Cuban people suffer as intransigent ideologues on both
sides wage their philosophical warfare.

And some of our group, clearly not impressed with the "U.S.
party line" given by Huddleston, were left with the sad realization
that only the "biological solution" of leaders here and in Cuba,
including the passing of a generation of Cuban expatriates who
remember the nation of their favored youth, will lead to any
meaningful changes.

There is a saying in Cuba when taken on a larger scale seems to
capture the contradictions, the seeming dichotomies of the Cuban
existence. The saying goes: The U.S. is the bad guy who does good
things and the Soviets are the good guys who do bad
things.

Cuba is a totalitarian regime that has its people scraping by on
a rationing system for basic household goods yet there is music on
seemingly every corner of old Havana; there is unspeakable poverty
yet a 95 percent literacy rate. People are unable to choose where
in the country they will live but they have 100 percent medical
coverage and a doctor in every village and neighborhood.

The Cuban people are charming, warm, even open, as much as is
possible within the confines of their repressive existence; some
tell wonderfully cynical jokes with impish grins so long as there
is no fear of being overheard.

They tell how their government forbids them to sell their car or
their house if they are lucky enough to have them to begin with to
any one other than the government. And in the next breath, they
insinuate there are ways around all these restrictions, using what
one Cuban native slyly and mischievously defined as "The Cuban
Imagination," conjuring up notions of a veritable nation on the
take.

It is a country with a dual currency, the lowly peso and the
lordly dollar, and well-being is defined by those who have access
to dollars and those who do not, although everything is just
pennies compared to this nation's rate. There are no elections, yet
Cuban art is wildly expressive.

There are blackouts in the middle of the day and water rationing
with water one day and not the next, although the nation is blessed
with many freshwater aquifers; drying laundry hangs in the windows
of once-elegant Beaux Arts mansions instead of curtains; cattle is
raised and herded yet Cuba imports butter.

The closest thing to an autonomous institution would be the
Catholic church. You can get married in a church and by a priest
but a civil ceremony is also required. Interestingly, Havana's
oldest church, one founded by slaves, is the only church in the
city able to grant asylum.

So it is truly a country in waiting, caught up in a state of
suspended animation and it was fascinating and frustrating to
behold.

It cannot last, not in its current incarnation, anyway, simply
because of the unique power of the personality, the mysterious,
brilliant charisma of its current leader; however ruthless and
calculating he may be, he cannot live forever.

The visitors will most likely return many are already there, the
Dutch, Germans, Canadians, Spanish, Israeli and the country will no
doubt eventually recapture the economic exploitation and
exportation of its Caribbean beauty and bounty.

It is only a matter of time; after all biological solutions do
seem to have a way of evolving.

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In recent weeks, Long Hill Township and Watchung Borough passed ordinances allowing their police departments to be able to apply for surplus equipment from the Department of Defense. Long Hill recently procured a Humvee to use in times of flooding, which Watchung states as the reason they are getting into the program. However, in cities around the country, police forces have used the program to obtain military gear, such as weapons and armor.
For more background, go to the link below
http://www.newjerseyhills.com/echoes-sentinel/news/watchung-police-department-hopes-to-receive-equipment-from-department-of/article_12ad002a-92b3-5449-a2cc-4b2cf0ce4339.html